The second division of six sledges started on the 26th, and March 4th I left with the rear division of nine sledges. Three marches carried us to Cape Sabine, along the curving northern edge of the north water. Here a northerly gale, with heavy drift, detained me for two days. Three more marches in a temperature of –40° F. brought me to the house at Cape D’Urville. Records here informed me that the first division had been detained here a week by stormy weather, and the second division had left but two days before my arrival. I had scarcely arrived when two of Henson’s Eskimos came in from Richardson Bay, where one of them had severely injured his leg by falling under a sledge. One day was spent at D’Urville drying our clothing, and on the 13th I got away on the trail of the other divisions with seven sledges, the injured man going to Sabine with the supporting party.
I hoped to reach Cape Louis Napoleon on this march, but the going was too heavy, and I was obliged to camp in Dobbin Bay, about five miles short of the cape. The next day I hoped on starting to reach Cape Fraser, but was again disappointed, a severe windstorm compelling me to halt a little south of Hayes Point, and hurriedly build snow igloos in the midst of a blinding drift. All that night and the next day, and the next night, the storm continued. An early start was made on the 16th, and in calm but very thick weather, we pushed on to Cape Fraser. Here we encountered the wind and drift full in our faces, and violent, making our progress from here to Cape Norton Shaw along the ice-foot very trying.
The going from here across Scoresby and Richardson bays was not worse than the year before; and from Cape Wilkes to Cape Lawrence the same as we had always found it. These two marches were made in clear but bitterly windy weather.
Another severe southerly gale held us prisoners at Cape Lawrence for a day. The 20th was an equally cruel day, with wind still savage in its strength, but the question of food for my dogs gave me no choice but to try to advance. At the end of four hours we were forced to burrow into a snow-bank for shelter, where we remained till the next morning.
In three more marches we reached Cape Leopold von Buch. Two more days of good weather brought us to a point a few miles north of Cape Defosse. Here we were stopped by another furious gale with drifting snow, which prisoned us for two nights and a day.
The wind was still bitter in our faces when we again got under way the morning of the 27th, the ice-foot became worse and worse up to Cape Cracroft, where we were forced down into the narrow tidal joint, at the base of the ice-foot; this path was a very narrow and tortuous one, frequently interrupted, and was extremely trying on men and sledges. Cape Lieber was reached on this march. At this camp the wind blew savagely all night, and in the morning I waited for it to moderate before attempting to cross Lady Franklin Bay. While thus waiting the returning Eskimos of the first and second divisions came in. They brought the very welcome news of the killing of 21 musk-oxen close to Conger. They also reported the wind out in the bay as less severe than at the Cape.
I immediately got under way and reached Conger just before midnight of the 28th—24 days from Etah—during six of which I was held up by storms.
The first division had arrived four days and the second two days earlier. During this journey there had been the usual annoying delays of broken sledges, and I had lost numbers of dogs.
The process of breaking in the tendons and muscles of my feet to their new relations, and the callousing of the amputation scars, in this, the first serious demand upon them, had been disagreeable, but was, I believed, final and complete. I felt that I had no reason to complain.
The herd of musk-oxen so opportunely secured near the station, with the meat cached here the previous spring, furnished the means to feed and rest my dogs. A period of thick weather followed my arrival at Conger and not until April 2d could I send back the Eskimos of my division.